“A Plague on Both Your Houses”

The percentage of those out of work defined as long-term unemployed is the highest (42%) since the Great Depression.

Fifty-four percent of college graduates younger than 25 are unemployed or underemployed.

Forty-seven percent of Americans receive some form of government assistance.

Employment-to-population ratio for 25- to 54-year-olds is now 75.7%, lower than when the recession “ended” in June 2009.

There are 7.7 million fewer full-time workers now than before the recession, and 3.3 million more part-time workers.

Eight million people have left the labor force since the recession “ended” — adding those back in would put the unemployment rate at 12% instead of 8.2%.

The number of unemployed looking for work for at least 27 weeks jumped 310,000 in May, the sharpest increase in a year.

Just 14% of high-school graduates believe they will have a more successful financial future than their parents.

The male unemployment rate for ages 16 to 19 is 27%; for ages 20 to 24, it is 13%.

Because of structural problems such as negative home equity (which keeps people from moving for work) and skills erosion (from long-term unemployment), UBS economists estimate that the economy’s natural unemployment rate has increased from 5.7% before the recession to 8.6% now. This acts as a speed limit on potential economic growth.

Phil may have stumbled on a good point here for once. If Congress and the President are equally responsible for the ‘economic woes’… with a Democratically controlled Senate that would make the donkeys 75% of the responsibility.

Story of the night: Scott Walker ended up getting MORE VOTES than Tom Barrett and Kathleen falk COMBINED. How unusual is that? Christian Schneider runs the numbers and looks back:

“A bit of context: traditionally, vote totals in contested primaries vastly exceed vote totals in corresponding primaries that are essentially uncontested. Take, for instance, the 2010 gubernatorial election, when Walker faced off against former congressman Mark Neumann, and Barrett ran for his party’s nomination essentially unopposed. Over 618,000 people voted in the GOP primary, while only 236,000 voters cast ballots in the Dem primary, where there was nothing at stake. That same year, Ron Johnson ran in a U.S. Senate GOP primary against several other candidates, while incumbent Russ Feingold was unopposed. The GOP primary drew 596,000 voters, while Feingold garnered only 224,000 votes. The Republican gubernatorial and senate primaries drew 263 percent and 266 percent more voters, respectively, than the Democrats.

“Yet last night’s primary saw something very different. Last night’s Democratic turnout for a contested primary (Falk, Barrett, and lesser candidates Doug La Follette, Kathleen Vinehout, and Walker’s liberal primary challenger) only surpassed Walker’s vote total by eight percent. Furthermore, the Democratic vote total was likely padded by Republicans who crossed over to vote for Kathleen Falk, sensing she would be an easier challenger for Walker to defeat in June. (In the absence of exit polling data, we will never know how many people were in this category; but in the days leading up to the primary, it was a very real debate among Republicans.)”

Even though you know better, you fall into the trap issued by the “evil” (per Paul Krugman) Republicans that their political intransigence is matched by that of the President Obama. Remember the President saying he was “led to the altar” by Boehner and then abandoned. Republicans are masters at attacking Democrats for their most egregious policies. This does two things: 1: Even though a lie, it redirects and defuses the criticism; 2: It ameliorates the shock value of the criticism by repetition.